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As I thought more about the massive furor over the issue of grace (or what some people are calling hyper-grace), I began to wonder why some people are so resistant to the idea. Of course control is a major issue, which I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, Dis-graceful Conduct. But as I thought about it more, I began to wonder why some people—good people, godly people, including friends of mine—were so rabidly and viciously coming out against the idea of the full grace of God. I asked myself why they couldn’t accept God’s generosity.

That’s when it dawned on me: they have trouble accepting God’s generosity because true generosity is so very rare these days. They don’t trust generosity in their fellow humans because it rarely comes without a price-tag of some sort. So along comes God into their lives, and His generosity is so immense that they simply cannot bring themselves to believe it.

Think about it: God offers us eternal life with Him in Heaven, a place that is so wonderful and beautiful that it defies description (1 Corinthians 2:9). And all we have to do is to repent and believe.

But the sweet by-and-by is not all that we get. We also get real and practical help throughout our life here on earth (Matthew 7:7-8). And all we have to do is to ask, believing.

But that’s not all we get. Every day as we live in the continual outpouring of God’s love, we become more and more like Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:17-18). And all we have to do is follow Him, believing.

And that’s not all we get. The Holy Spirit gives us gifts for ministering to our fellow humans so that we can live together in harmony as the Body of Christ here on earth (1 Corinthians 12 & 13). And all we have to do is follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, believing.

But that’s still not all we get. Someday—and it’s going to be soon!—Jesus will come rapture away His church to escape the Tribulation and instead enjoy a 7 year wedding feast: ours to Jesus! (Matthew 25:1-13 & Revelation 21). And all we have to do is keep doing the work He has given us to do, believing.

So it’s not all a control issue. Plus, I think that it’s not only a matter of looking for the hidden price-tag on God’s Generous Grace. As I dug a little deeper, I realized that some people have trouble accepting even a compliment from a friend. Compliments don’t often come with a price-tag, so why would people have trouble accepting compliments? Because they don’t feel like they deserve it. Likewise, they have trouble with the full generosity of God’s Grace because they know that they don’t deserve it. Of course they don’t! None of us do! The definition of grace is unmerited favor. When we are born-again, we are given what we don’t deserve because Jesus took the punishment that He didn’t deserve. And all in the name of Love.

Grace is powerful. It can transform lives by the power of love. His love for us transforms us from strangers into daughters and sons of the Most High God. And our love for Him transforms us into victorious overcomers as we live to please our Generous God.

Grace is generous—mind-blowingly generous. Man’s generosity comes with a price-tag. God’s generosity also comes with a price-tag: come and die. But then He promises that if we lose our life for Him, we gain it (Matthew 10:39; John 12:25), so that in the end, the cost of enjoying God’s generosity has been paid for us, and all we have to do is live it out, believing. Trust God! Why? Because God is good!

Day Eighteen

This morning I read yet another rant against grace, and now I just can’t keep silent any longer.

Grace is the power of God to save. Power. To save. People who want to reduce grace only to a salvation event fail to understand the power behind grace.

On the other hand, people who want to use grace as a license to sin fail to understand the true liberty of grace, and also the necessity of repentance (read Romans chapter 6).

Grace has been granted once and for all to cover our every sin past, present, and future. That should be obvious, since this all happened long before any of us alive today were born (or our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents, etc.).

Grace is also the power to walk in the newness of life, once we’ve repented. Without repentance, we are not allowed access to grace. Grace is granted only on the condition that we have repented. Repentance is literally turning around and going the opposite direction. If my life didn’t produce fruit that shows my repentance (Matthew 3:8), then I also wouldn’t truly have grace. Therefore, grace is not a license to sin.

Grace gives us power to live this new life through the same thing that brought us to the cross: love—our response to Jesus’ love. “We love Him because He first loved us,” (1 John 4:19, NKJV). Love and grace are inseparable. Grace was granted to us because of Jesus’ love for us. If He hadn’t died for us, then we couldn’t say that He ever loved us, and grace would be an unknown and unknowable concept. So since love and grace are inseparable, if we love Him, we also have the power (through grace) to live a life that is pleasing to Him.

The problem is us, not grace. Our love is imperfect. We tend to think of love as an emotion. Love is a decision—a sacrificial decision. Love made Jesus lay down His life for us (John 15:13). If we waver and struggle with sin, it’s because we love the world more than we love Jesus. And in that case, we need to go back to step one: repentance. If we don’t do repentance right, then our whole Christian walk is worthless—worse than worthless because it casts a negative light on the Gospel.

But to go too far the other way risks falling back into legalism. Legalism is a rejection of grace. It says to Jesus, “No thanks, I can do it for myself.” For more about how I feel about legalism, look at my recent post: Stop Complicating the Simple Things.

I got an e-mail the other day saying that my lifelong friend had committed suicide. He was a believer, but clearly must have been in a terrible personal crisis. Nobody had any idea, but now that I think of it, he probably never got over his big brother’s death 30 years ago. Not that any of us have gotten over that, either, but I think it affected Jim more profoundly than any of us had realized. Looking back, I realize that’s probably why he drank. I don’t remember him drinking to excess before Nick died. And I think he just always felt inferior to Nick because Nick was loved by everyone.

I loved Jim, and even if I had never thought this through before, I know that I did show him lots of love. My whole family did. He often called my parents just to talk. But I think that some wounds are just too deep for ordinary human love to heal. But he had turned to drink instead of to God for comfort.

One thing I was led to do was to forgive him this last sin—after all, suicide is the sin you can’t repent from. So I forgave him because Jesus said that the sins we forgive will be forgiven (John 20:22-23). I think that it doesn’t occur to most people to forgive suicides. After all, it’s such a selfish act that leaves everyone you love feeling beaten and broken and confused.